The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged middle east

Glenn Beck cancels Fox News show

By | 04.06.11 | 1:56 pm | More from The Colorado Independent

Ending increasing speculation about the fate of his controversial daily show at Fox News, Glenn Beck announced Wednesday that he was ending his three-year run. The show will go off the air “later this year” according to a release. It will no doubt continue to rivet millions of Americans, light More…

Rand Paul slams Obama for not seeking Congress’ approval on Libya

By | 04.04.11 | 2:39 pm | More from The Iowa Independent

DES MOINES — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told a crowd of Republican officials and activists in Des Moines over the weekend that President Barack Obama should have come to Congress before taking military action in the Middle East, as President George W. Bush did for Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. military requests software to create fake online personas in the ‘war of ideas’

By | 03.17.11 | 5:25 pm

UK newspaper The Guardian reports today that U.S. Central Command (Centcom), responsible for military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, has awarded a contract to Ntrepid, a California security firm, to develop so-called “sock puppet” software for use by the military.

The software would allow military More…

Don’t Hold Your Next Academic Conference in Egypt or Pakistan

By | 05.25.10 | 9:32 am

Mark Mazzetti has a blockbuster piece in today’s New York Times about a secret order issued by Gen. David Petraeus last fall, with the aid of Adm. Eric Olson, that authorizes Special Operations Forces in the Middle East and South Asia to “fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other More…

Counterterrorism Center Has Only ‘Eight or Nine’ Middle East Analysts

By | 01.05.10 | 12:41 pm

President Obama is scheduled to meet on Tuesday afternoon with 20 of his security advisers to receive the results of two inquiries into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab snuck a bomb onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. One of those advisers is Michael Leiter, the Bush-appointed director of the More…

Human Rights Watch vs. Human Rights Watch on Obama’s Cairo Speech

By | 06.05.09 | 8:53 am

What did the human-rights-promotion community think about the Cairo speech? According to vanguard organization Human Rights Watch’s official statement, emailed to me at 4:14 p.m. yesterday, not such great things. This release was titled “U.S./Egypt: Obama Dodged Rights Issue: Generalities Failed to Send Tough Message on Mideast Repression.”

President Barack

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(Something Like) Democracy in Iran?

By | 06.03.09 | 11:37 am

I don’t remotely have enough knowledge about the forthcoming Iranian presidential election — and after so many misforecast assessments over so many years, I’m dubious that anyone here in the United States really does — but I would really like every word of this Andrew Sullivan post to be More…

Let My People Go

By | 06.03.09 | 10:42 am

Craig Shirley, the Republican political strategist who wrote a fine book about Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign, is probably the most red meat conservative writer for Politico’s “Arena” of short takes on the news. His take on President Obama’s trip to the Middle East:

And now there

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So Which Member of Congress Was Wiretapped?

By | 04.16.09 | 10:18 am

The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency improperly wiretapped a member of Congress who was “part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006.” Greg Sargent wants to know who it was. Don’t we all. To the Googling stations!

Freeman Loses By Winning

By | 03.09.09 | 1:18 pm

At the end of a thoughtful post about National Intelligence Council Chairman Chas Freeman, Ezra Klein observes:

But for Freeman’s detractors, a loss might still be a win. As Sullivan and others have documented, the controversy over Freeman is fundamentally a question of his views on Israel.

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